Broken Links
by SerendipitousSerenity
Summary: Post Auld Acquaintance. Things are not over, not by a long shot. Both the Justice League and Young Justice has to deal with the aftermath, including fixing relationships they had unwittingly damaged.


AN: Written for the 'Diseases and Illnesses' challenges. Prompt: pneumonia

Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice or any of its characters. They belong to their respective owners.

* * *

_escrimasticks batman thelight mindcontrol?_

_batman punch, hurts, holeinthefloor, fall_

_superboy grabs his hands and swings him around, flinging him towards batman_

_collide in the air, starro-chip antidote in his hand_

_batman turns them around, slam into the wall, crash_

_hands on his neck, hurtscantbreathand- _

_s-snap_

Dick wakes up, shaking and shivering and absolutely drenched with sweat. He bites down hard on his lips to stop the scream that's on the tip of his tongue from escaping. With a sigh he sits up and turns to look at the clock. 03:32 AM, it reads.

It's not astrous. In fact, it's so far from astrous that the sliding scale of Aster versus Dis is broken. He's got school in the morning and while Dick Grayson is the epitome of Brilliant but Lazy (tt, he's going to kill Wally for ever introducing him to that website), it's not like he can sleep through P.E. The class isn't hard for an ex-circus acrobat, but he has to hold himself back so as to not pull a telltale 'Robin' move, which is both annoying and requires a lot of concentration. And he had that _stupid_ chem test first thing in the morning, which he'd forgotten until yesterday thanks to the whole New Year fiasco and the subsequent clean-up. Bruce will suspend him from the team if his grades dropped, that was the deal they made after the Team was formed, so he can't afford to get a bad grade.

_Well, it's not like I'm going to get any more sleep tonight, stupid nightmare. _It's been a week since New Years, he's dealing fine, so why won't it _go away _already? _Stupid Light. Stupid teacher. Who the hell gives a test on the first day after winter break, anyway? _He sighs and sits up, ignoring the twinge of pain in his side as he does so. It's just a few bruised ribs, hardly the worse injury he's ever received. He gets out of bed and picks a few books from his desk, and starts studying.

The first day of school, Dick decides, was a disaster, emphasis on the _dis. _If every first-day-of-school is cursed to be this bad, he's going to just skip senior high and go straight into college. He's pretty sure he aced the chem test (you can't be the best friend of Kid Flash for years without picking up some of his science-babble), that's probably the only great thing that happened to him today. The kids at school are being meaner than usual, he can live with that (who cares about the opinion of spoilt brats? Not him, that's for sure). Them throwing the books he borrowed from the library to the pool. Incredibly juvenile, and he received an earful from the nasty librarian, but again he's not bothered much. Them picking on another kid for standing up for him? Not so much, and it ends up with him receiving several more bruises to his pretty impressive collection.

He returns to the manor slightly more sore than when he left it. That's not a big deal for him- he's fought the like of Bane and Blockbuster before, all of whom are significantly stronger than schoolyard bullies (if he were in a better mood, he'd joke that 'walls and I have a thing going on'), but apparently it is for Bruce.

"How was your day, Master Dick?" Alfred asks just as he enters through the door, and he replies with a sour, "Astrous, Al. Just astrous." He knows that Alfred doesn't deserve to be treated like that, but he's in a bad mood. He can apologize later, and Alfred will make some snarky comment and forgive him. "Where's Bruce?" he asks.

"He is in his study, Master Dick, but he is busy right now and has asked you not to bother him." _Translation: He is in the Batcave and has been working far too long; go down and talk some sense into him, will you?_ Dick sighs, changes into his Robin uniform, and walks through the secret passage (it's not a proper secret superhero lair without a secret passage) to the Batcave. His mentor is there sitting in front of the Batcomputer (Bat-cave, bat-computer, bat-mobile, bat-arang, is it any wonder he's so obsessed with prefixes?) reading some highly-classified-but-Robin-will-crack-into-them-anyway files.

"Robin," the Batman acknowledges without looking up. Dick has long since given up trying to figure out how his mentor detects his, and everyone's presence all the time- he accepts that it's because he's the Goddamn Batman. That doesn't mean he's stopped trying to sneak up to him.

"Batman," he greets. "What are you reading?" Batman knows better than to read actual, really-top-secret classified files when he's around, so it's probably nothing _too_ dangerous. Then again, what the Batfamily considers 'not too dangerous' is closer to national secrets than anything. 'Dangerous' is the secret identity of superheroes. 'Dangerous' are the files on supervillains, the likes of Lex Luthor and Ra's al Ghul. Considering how powerful some metas like Superman are, nothing short of nuclear launch keys are really 'dangerous' in their eye.

"The missing sixteen hours," is Batman's answer, and it's enough for Robin. They have nothing- absolutely nothing on the sixteen hours in which almost all of the League's founding members went missing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. A fact Robin finds kind of disturbing, because Batman is _the_ greatest detective in the world. If the Goddamn Batman can't find anything, no one can.

"You're bound to find something sooner or later," he tries to cheer him up, but Batman only grunts in response. "Did you find anything from the Starro… chip thing?" English doesn't really have a shorthand for 'a combination of sorcery and xeno-bio-nanotechnology that controls minds'. Then again, most languages probably don't.

"No, not yet. I'm still running an analysis on their components."

"Shouldn't S.T.A.R Labs be more qualified for this kind of thing?" Robin wonders aloud. There's only so much space in the Batcave after all, and S.T.A.R Labs has cutting-edge technology, trained experts, and lots of resources on hand.

"Too risky. You know what happened the last time we left dangerous artifacts in the hand of civillians."

Oh, yeah. That. Robin winces. They'd entrusted the remains of the Starro creature (not that they'd known what it was back then) to the police department and Sportsmaster stole it when the world had been separated between adults and children, sparking a riot. Said remains had also been a key part in the Light's plan.

"So, what are we doing tonight?"he asks casually. "Do we have a mission or something?"

"No, I don't have any missions for the team. The Light seems to be lying low right now," Batman says, and Dick knows that his mentor will probably spend the rest of the month obsessing over it. Alfred isn't going to be happy with this.

"Well at least we're going on patrol like usual, right?" It's an unusually bright night, and most of Gotham's regular villains are in Arkham. Perfect conditions for a patrol. Batman looks at him.

"_I _am going on patrol. _You _are staying here," he says, and Dick gapes at him.

"But Batman-"

"We have reason to believe that our bases have been compromised, who knows what kind of information the Light managed to dig out from our files? Therefore, until we know more, one of us has to stay here at all times," Batman cuts him off in that firm, monotonous voice of his. Dick grits his teeth in annoyance.

"Fine," he says through his teeth. Seriously? He's been Batman's partner for four years now, and he gets babysitting duty? Well, cave-sitting. Whatever. He knows that Batman's excuse is bullshit. If the Light wants to invade the Batcave they would have done it when they had the entire Justice League under control. And the 'cave is free of any bugs or monitoring devices. Dick knows this because he's done like a hundred bug-sweeps and checks in the last week. He's even polished every square inch of the giant penny and taken apart the robot T-rex in the cave.

"While I'm away, I expect you to check the cave for any bugs-" _for the hundredth time this week, _Dick thinks, "-upgrade the Batcomputer's firewalls-" _I've already done that, like, twenty hours ago _"-and polish and sharpen the spare batarangs." _Like they aren't sharp already, they're barely out of their boxes. _"Keep the commlink open at all times and monitor the alerts. You are not to leave the cave except for extraordinary circumstances. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, sir." Inwardly he sighed. _Does he think I'm a five year old or something? I've been his partner for years, I can handle cave-sitting. He's treating me like a child! _Right now, he really wants to destroy something, but that's Conner's thing, not his. And besides, acting so childish would probably make things worse. "I'm… I'm going to train."

"Wait," Batman says gruffly. He turns around to receive a flashdrive, the kind that was as big as his palm and could store several terabytes of data. "This is the data we salvaged from the raid on Cadmus last week. They're heavily encrypted and in some places, corrupted. I haven't had time to look at it, so I want you to do so."

Robin gives him a skeptical look. "You do realize that the Light has probably erased all of their trails, right? The only thing in here is probably research notes," he states. Batman gives him a Look. The same look he usually gives Robin whenever he hasn't finished a chore on time, the one that says, _Do this if you know what's good for you, young man._ "Oh, fine. I'll look it over when I have the time."

"See to it that you do."

Batman leaves for patrol at sixteen hundred hours. The Batcave feels so… empty, without its owner around. It's damp and gloomy even with the lights on but Bats would have his head if he leaves the place for even a minute so he decides to finish the chores he was left with. The bug sweep doesn't take much time at all, since he's done it thousands of times since becoming Batman's protégé. The same goes for the batarangs, he's probably finished it on record time. That leaves upgrading the firewalls and the little side-mission Batman has left him, the latter of which will probably take most of the night.

Despite what people _coughWallycough _think, his job as a hacker isn't just typing random numbers and letters. It's a lot harder than it looks like, especially when it comes to high-end stuff like the highly advanced, customed firewalls protecting the Batcomputer. It's like trying to find a loophole in rules cooked up by a team of the finest lawyers, not impossible, but hard. He has to read between lines a lot and keep an eye out for minute details. After he finds a loophole, he has to seal it close and make sure that it doesn't open yet another hole, which is just as hard as finding it in the first place. He's been trained by the World's Greatest Detective, though, so it's not _that _hard, just mentally exhausting. Really exhausting.

His eyes hurt after reading so many lines of code (in a special, customized programming language Batman has madewhich he calls, uninventively, BAT), so after his work is done he sits back for a while and close his eyes. _Just for a little while, _he promises himself. But after a few seconds the world around him starts to blur and turn into no_thingn-_

_escrimasticks batman thelight mindcontrol?_

_batman punch, hurts, holeinthefloor, fall_

_superboy grabs his hands and swings him around, flinging him towards batman_

_collide in the air, starro-chip antidote in his hand_

_batman turns them around, slam into the wall, crash_

_hands on his head gripping his hair_

_his head repeatedly hitting the wall, painpainpain-_

_crack_

He wakes up, and this time there isn't anything on his tongue but a muffled sob. Furiously he blinks away the moisture that's clouding his eyes. He's thankful that there aren't any security cameras in the Cave (security risk, people can hack all too easily into them) because Batman will kill him for sleeping on the job and he likes being alive, thankyouverymuch.

He shivers, and it's not because of how cold the 'cave is. Of all the times to get nightmares (if there are nightmares, why aren't there daystallions?), it's probably the worst. He's gotten over his fear of falling. He's stopped freezing up everytime he hears music he remembers from _that night_. The last time he's had flashbacks of _that night _was when he ran afoul of Crane's fear gas.

And now those nightmares are replaced by something decidedly worse.

Dick knows that Bruce can't find out about this, ever. He's blaming himself plenty enough, over not realizing who the mole was, over being controlled by the league, over fighting his own protégé. Dick can see the sadness and guilt in his eyes everytime they meet. And- yeah, part of it is probably Dick's fault, too. He's been avoiding him lately, never looking at him in the eye or just having a small chat. Batman's just so damn skilled and strong, next to him Robin is like an insignificant fly. Even while being controlled by Klarion, Batman was this close to beating Robin into a bloody pulp (he's still got the bruises to prove it too). And to be honest? It scares him more than anything else. If Batman had been under complete control of his mental faculties while fighting him, he would probably be dead- _rotting in the ground with his parents- _right now.

And the look in his eyes when they were fighting- oh God, those eyes. So blank and empty, without any kind of emotion. None of the _passion _for justice Robin is so accustomed to see. He might as well have been a robot, and not the good kind like Red Tornado. He'd been like a biological killing machine (that's an oxymoron, right? He hates oxymorons, they don't ever make sense) that thought in binary and C, not emotions and feelings. He's seen that kind of eyes before exactly once- _zur en arrh, bruce's- batman's safeword- _but never, never directed at him. He's sparred with Bruce many times before, but never, ever seriously, Bruce never, ever tried to kill him, never, ever- _he sounds like a broken record, playing words over and over, again and again, they sound so meaningless to him now-_

_how long is 'never'?_

* * *

AN: So… *cough* I decided to do a Disease and Illnesses challenge, and what I got is this. It doesn't really makes sense now, but it will, I promise. I mean, having your mentor, the person you trust the most trying to kill you is bound to cause some mental scarring, right? And Daddy!bats is adorable and I love them as much as the next person, but it's Batman we're talking about. He has the social grace of a drunken bull in a china shop. I know he's a much more sociable person in YJ than in comics, but he's still Batman! A kick-ass hero, but a lousy father-figure. See also: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne. No Bruce, it's not okay to make your other Robins feel like a replacement of the first one. Firing them for not doing the job well isn't okay too, didn't you learn anything from Robin: Year One? And you think YJ!Superman was bad…

*cough* sorry for ranting, I'm just rather annoyed that people seem to make Batman like the best daddy in the world when he isn't, you know? He's human. He makes mistakes like anybody. He's greater than most people, but that also means that his mistakes tend to be just as great. Now, Alfred on the other hand…

I'm not a hacker, so I'm not really sure how hacking works. If any readers know better, please tell me, I'd really appreciate it.

zur-en-arrh is a trigger word that is connected to a 'backup personality' of Batman, a personality that is 'Batman without Bruce Wayne'. In this state, Batman is much more ruthless and cold. It was created to keep himself safe in case he was mindwiped or overwhelmed by psychological trauma. Incidentally, the character 'Bat-mite', which supposedly comes from the 'fifth dimension', is _also_ a fragment of Bruce's mind, designed to keep Zur En Arrh from going too far. The phrase comes from the last words Bruce heard from his father on the night his parents was killed. Actually it was something about Zorro, which was the film they watched at the cinema that night, but he misheard it.

Fun fact: the zur-en-arrh thing, like a lot of things in the comics, is actually a recent addition/retcon. During the Silver Age, there was a storyline where theBatman from the planet of Zur-En-Arrh came to visit Earth!Batman and ask him for help fighting against an enemy. Turns out, on Zur-En-Arrh, Earth!Batman has Superman-like powers, like how Kryptonians have human-level power on their home planet but become superpowered on Earth. Naturally, during the more serious Bronze Age this storyline was retconned into 'just a dream', but the phrase 'zur-en-arrh' stayed.

Next up, we see more of Bruce's PoV and his guilt over what's happened. Dick trying to hide his nightmares from everyone and the toll it takes on him. Maybe something with the YJ team… Oh, and probably some awkward Conner and Clark bonding, just to keep this from growing too depressing.

Please tell me what you think about it! The next chapter is being typed out as we speak and will probably be published in a week or so. I plan to finish this before uni starts. Also, does anyone know when the hiatus is going to end?


End file.
